Just to be clear: if found guilty of the charges - multiple rape, attempted rape and sexual abuse - I think the sentence should be harsh. The 30 - 40 doesn't sound bad at all. The horror of rape cannot be exaggerated.

In Finland though, the maximum possible sentence is 12 years, I recall. They call that "life sentence". Unfortunately my poor translation does not do the subtle nuances justice...

There's also this to consider: a pedophile is a sick individual, most cases unable to control his behaviour. While prison is certainly a place to put such an individual, he could be held for a much longer period of time and possibly even helped in a psychiatric institution. By helping him to avoid such behaviour in the future society would, in fact, be helping itself.

There's also this to consider: a pedophile is a sick individual, most cases unable to control his behaviour. While prison is certainly a place to put such an individual, he could be held for a much longer period of time and possibly even helped in a psychiatric institution.

Hell yes. From what I hear, life in institution can be far more fucked up then in prison. Plus, you know "Still not healed, mr. sex offender? We'll just tag on another 6 months of therapy, hmm? Yes, that makes 8 years now while you would've left prision. But this isn't punishment...we're helping you. *cue ominous lightning*

Well. Most of these charges are not for rapes. There is only one try to rape. In other cases he have made sex with voluntary young girls. That's crime also, but not a rape. Most of cases are with girls of 16-17 years old. That is a crime in Finland only if he have used his authority of teacher to get sex. Some cases (about 15) are with girls younger than 16.

800 rapes would be punish more than six years of jail in Finland also.

A kid is a kid!

Adults don't need to be having sex with teenage girls (or boys) end of story! Rape, not rape this is all semantical. Sure, 100 years ago 16 yo girls were consider women, in fact my own great grandmother married at 13 but these were different times. A 16 yo is not as mature as they were 50 or 100 years ago. So personally I think they should cut his Jacobs off! Just goes to show you, you gotta watch who is with your kids.

"Phelps also hates Scandinavians and Lutherans in particular, whom he considers to be hellbound heretics. That may be because a Lutheran girl of Swedish origin, Luava Sundgren, separated his son Mark from the rest of his family. Phelps' hatred for Finns began in 1998, when a Finnish national humiliated him on a religious debate.[citation needed] As Tarja Halonen won the Finnish presidential election in 2000, Phelps made issue of the fact that Halonen, a lawyer by profession, though heterosexual herself, had in her youth worked as the human rights lawyer of SETA, a Finnish LGBT organization. Phelps threatened on his webpage to come with his congregation to burn the Finnish flag in front of the Finnish Parliament. This threat united Finnish lesbigays, reservists and hackers, who cracked his website and defaced it by replacing every page with a Finnish flag. The Finnish police stated that his safety could not be guaranteed should he arrive in Finland, and that should he carry out his intentions he would be arrested for defacing the national flag. He did not carry out his threat.

Phelps seems to have targeted his hatred against Sweden instead of Finland after the prosecution in June, 2004, of Swedish pentecostal pastor Åke Green on hate-speech charges for comments about homosexuality; both countries are traditional Lutheran countries. On the Westboro website godhatessweden.com, Phelps declares the heavy Swedish losses in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, initially calculated (exaggeratedly) at 20,000, to be God's punishment of Sweden for the prosecution of Green, and depicts a granite monument designed by himself to Green as a Christian martyr, announcing plans to erect copies of it throughout the U.S. In response, Green has called Phelps "appalling" and "extremely unpleasant," stressing that while Phelps proclaims hatred for homosexuals and condemns them to Hell, Green hopes for them to repent and go to Heaven."